US lawmaker seeks inquiry into disappearance of Chinese journalists

A US congressman is calling on the State Department to urge China to investigate the disappearance of three Chinese citizen journalists who sought to expose the impact of the coronavirus on the Chinese city of Wuhan.

In a letter dated Tuesday, Republican Representative Jim Banks asked the US government to seek a probe into the fates of Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua. According to media reports, they went missing after taking videos and publishing them online including images of overwhelmed hospitals and corpses piled in a minibus.

"All three of these men understood the personal risk associated with independently reporting on coronavirus in China, but they did it anyway," Banks wrote, alleging that the Chinese government "imprisoned them - or worse."

The Chinese Embassy and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The virus, which has become a global pandemic, first emerged in Wuhan in late December, sickening tens of thousands and upending life in the industrial city of 11 million people in central China.

China's censorship policies came under scrutiny since the virus outbreak amid allegations from online critics and local media that they potentially obscured the seriousness of the outbreak in its early stages.